Pen Recycling at Bootham School
BEAST are committed to making a real change in school, many thanks to student, Bobby Ren who has introduced pen recycling to the school this term!
Q: How many pens are thrown away each year?
A: According to The University of Southern Indiana, 1.6 billion pens wind up in landfill each year. Many of them are thrown into the sea and are extremely detrimental to marine life.
Q: Why are pens so hard to recycle?
A: Complete pens can’t go into normal plastic recycling bins because they contain pieces of metal, as well as the remainder of the ink, and many organizations do not accept small plastic materials.
Q: Why we do this?
A: We found that most pens are consumed in schools, especially markers, and generally they are often not highly regarded as potentially wasteful or harmful. We feel responsible to do this as we now know the dangers.
We will not just be focusing on recycling pens, all potential recycling targets will be considered by us. Our ultimate goal is to truly contribute to the reduction of waste and reinventing ways to use ‘waste’. To achieve this, we will make a website, recording our step-by-step plans. Those posted projects, as truly experienced by ourselves, will be more convincing and serve as a springboard for all the students around the world who share the common idea with us, no matter which year group, school or country they are in, to successfully achieving their goals of protecting the environment. The website will also serve as a community, where students, parents, teachers and schools can communicate about the current environmental issues and their ingenious approaches to tackle them in schools.
